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Neil Smelser
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Neil Smelser

American sociologist
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Also known as: Neil Joseph Smelser
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Article History
Quick Facts
In full:
Neil Joseph Smelser
Born:
July 22, 1930, Kahoka, Missouri, U.S.
Died:
October 2, 2017, Berkeley, California (aged 87)

Neil Smelser (born July 22, 1930, Kahoka, Missouri, U.S.—died October 2, 2017, Berkeley, California) was an American sociologist noted for his work on the application of sociological theory to the study of economic institutions, collective behaviour, social change, and personality and social structure.

Smelser was a Rhodes scholar at the University of Oxford from 1952 to 1954 and received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1958. He also studied at the San Francisco Psychoanalytic Institute and joined the University of California at Berkeley faculty, becoming a full professor of sociology in 1962 and a professor emeritus in 1994. He was made associate director of the Institute for International Relations (1969–73, 1980–81).

Besides serving on numerous national sociological-research boards and associations, he published his sociological theories in such works as Economy and Society (1956; with Talcott Parsons), Theory of Collective Behavior (1962), Sociological Theory: A Contemporary View (1971), The Changing Academic Market (1980; with Robin Content), and the International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences (2001; with Paul B. Baltes).

Smelser served as the director of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, an international organization promoting social-science research and education, from 1994 to 2001. In 2002 he was the recipient of the International Sociological Association Mattei Dogan Prize for Distinguished Career Achievement.

This article was most recently revised and updated by Encyclopaedia Britannica.